The concept of Homeric or simply Greek honour is not as easy to comprehend as is commonly assumed. Basically it is a system of values stemming from the belief that no harm done to self, kinsman, friend or property should remain uncompensated or unavenged. In a way, what is subsumed under the term honour is an awareness that the higher one bids the higher one is. In the present article the English word ‘honour’ is only a code word for the various fundamentals of life that belong to the semantic compass of Homeric timē. The word ‘cattle’ is also a code word for livestock, especially bovine animals as well as sheep and goats. Honour is not much talked about these days, and many educated people are familiar with some of its aspects mostly through the works of cultural anthropologists who, it seems, have to go to the far corners of the earth to study it. Yet, both honour and the price for honour are ubiquitous in our modern world. The difference is that the state is the keeper of every citizen's honour and as such it regulates punishment for offence to collective or individual honour and, through its courts, decides the material price that must be paid in compensation for real or even intended harm.